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A History of Congregation Mickve Israel
Monterey Square Savannah, Georgia
The Hope of Israel
Forty-two brave pioneering Jews, the “largest group of Jews to land in North America in Colonial days” arrived in Savannah on July 11, 1733, just five months after General James Edward Oglethorpe established the colony of Georgia. Although the trip on the William and Sarah was rough, and they ran aground near North Carolina, the new colony continued to provide hope for those “industrious” poor Sephardic and Ashkenazic Jews in London who had been living in difficult circumstances.
In 1732 there were 6,000 Jews living in
London. The more affluent and established members of that Jewish community,
threatened by the poverty of their coreligionists, provided generous
financial support by subscribing to Oglethorpe’s new colony of Georgia, in
addition to helping their fellow Jews set sail on the second boat for
Georgia. Among the Jews who helped subscribe were members of the Spanish
and Portuguese Bevis Marks Synagogue,
These founders of Mickve Israel brought with them a “Safertoro” [sic] made of deerskin, with two “cloaks,” and a “circumcision box,” which was donated by a London merchant. This Torah is still used on commemorative occasions at Mickve Israel.
All but eight of the original forty-two Jewish colonists were Spanish/Portuguese Jews who had arrived in London ten years earlier, having lived as Crypto-Jews, publicly practicing Roman Catholicism and secretly preserving their Jewish heritage, prior to their departure from Portugal. Among these Sephardic Jews was Dr. Samuel Nunes Ribiero, a physician who had been imprisoned during the Inquisition for his successful efforts to convert New Christians back to the Jewish faith. Of the eight Ashkenazic founders were the families of Abraham Minis and Benjamin Sheftall, whose descendants are benefactors and active participants in the congregation today.
Savannah’s Jewish community followed a sequence different from the two older Jewish communities in New York (1654) and Newport (1695), and markedly different from the newer colonial Jewish settlements in Philadelphia (1739) and Charleston (1749). The primary act of the Savannah settlers was the founding of a congregation, then the establishment of a cemetery, followed by a “mickvah,” or ritual bath (on April 2, 1738). The pattern of the other colonial communities was to first build a cemetery, then a mickvah, and finally to found a congregation.
The Early Savannah Congregation
Upon settling in Georgia, the Savannah
Jews probably held services in the homes of members.
At an unknown date, a house was rented on Market (now Ellis) Square and was altered for regular congregational services. But the small congregation faced internal problems.
Although the Minis and Sheftall families became identified almost immediately with the Sephardic group, many other Ashkenazic Jews arrived in Savannah, mostly by land, and did not become a part of the Sephardic religious group. A sharp schism developed. The early difficulties encountered in constructing a synagogue building are evident in a letter by the Reverend Bolzius, minister to the Salzburgers, in 1739 to a friend in Germany. He wrote:
Even the Jews, of whom several families are here already, enjoy all privileges the same as other colonists. Some call themselves Spanish and Portuguese, others call themselves German Jews. The latter speak High German and differ from the former in their religious services and to some extent in other matters as well, as the former do not seem to take it so particular in regard to the dietary laws and other Jewish ceremonies. They have no Synagogue, which is their own fault; the one element hindering the other in this regard. The German Jews believe themselves entitled to build a Synagogue and are willing to allow the Spanish Jews to use it with them in common, the latter, however, reject any such arrangement and demand the preference for themselves.
The local laws and regulations forbidding rum and slavery, strictly regulating commerce and trade, and providing that only males could inherit property, all but caused the disintegration of Georgia. Many Gentiles fled the city. Sephardic Jews had a more compelling reason to leave. The European war between Spain and England had reached this continent where it was known as the War of Jenkins’ Ear. On July 5, 1742, some 3,000 Spanish soldiers landed on St. Simons Island with plans to capture Georgia quickly and then move on against the more heavily defended Carolinas. In the eyes of the Spanish Church, the Sephardic Jews were guilty of apostasy, which was punishable by burning at the stake. Only the Minis and Sheftall families remained in Savannah since they, being regarded as of Germanic origin and never having professed Catholicism, could not be accused of apostasy. Thereafter the lease on the Market Square-rented synagogue was not renewed and what services were held were informally conducted in the home of Benjamin Sheftall.
By 1774 enough Jews had moved back to
Savannah that Benjamin Sheftall reported in his diary, “having a sufficient
number of Jews here to make a congregation we came to a resolution to meet
at the house of Mordecai Sheftall (Benjamin’s son) which was done.” This
meeting was held on the eve of Yom Kippur in a room that Mordecai Sheftall
had furnished as a chapel. However, unrest was forthcoming since the war
with England was imminent.
During the Revolutionary War, Mordecai Sheftall became the highest ranking Jewish officer of the American Revolutionary forces, attaining the rank of Deputy Commissary General to the Continental Troops in South Carolina and Georgia. Along with his son Sheftall, he was captured by British forces and imprisoned in Antigua. Eventually they were traded for two captured British officers.
From the outbreak of hostilities until the Treaty of Paris there was a virtual cessation of all formal organized religious activity in Savannah. It was July 7, 1786, before conditions were sufficiently normal to permit the reorganization of the “K. K. Mickvah [sic] Israel.” Officers were elected, and a house was rented from a Miss Ann Morgan located on Broughton Street Lane between Barnard and Whitaker streets and furnished for use as a synagogue. Services were held regularly, and at one time attendance numbered “seventy-three males and females.”
On November 20, 1790, Governor Edward Telfair granted the congregation a perpetual charter as “a body incorporate by the name and style of the ‘Parnas and Adjuntas of Mickve Israel at Savannah,’” the same charter under which the congregation operates today. (A photocopy of the original charter can be seen in the archival museum of the congregation.)
By 1793 the rent on the Broughton Street Lane building was constantly delinquent, and on at least one occasion Miss Morgan became so upset that Mordecai Sheftall, who then ran a general store, was requested by David Cardozo, treasurer of the congregation, to let her have merchandise for the amount owed and “charge the same to Sedaka [sic] K. K. Mickvah [sic] Israel.” Shortly afterward “the aged, main props of the Synagogue, having closed their earthly careers …conspired to produce a suspension of public worship, and the building was surrendered to the owner.”
Although the congregation functioned for many years without its own synagogue, the loyal few zealously guarded the corporate identity and existence by having regular meetings and electing officers while conducting services in the homes of various members.
Presidential Letters
Upon George Washington’s election as first president of the United States, Levi Sheftall, president of the congregation wrote, on “behalf of the Hebrew Congregation,” a congratulatory letter “on you appointment, by unanimous approbation, to the Presidential dignity of the country.”
President Washington dispatched an immediate answer “To the Hebrew Congregation of the City of Savannah, Georgia”:
May the same wonder-working Deity, who long since delivered the Hebrews from their Egyptian oppressors, planted them in the promised land, whose providential agency has lately been conspicuous in establishing these United States as an independent nation, still continue to water them with the dews of Heaven, and make the inhabitants of every denomination partake in the temporal and spiritual blessings of that people, whose God is Jehova.
The First Synagogue in Georgia
By 1818 the growth of the Jewish population of Savannah encouraged the congregation to seek its own synagogue building. Dr. Moses Sheftall and Dr. Jacob De la Motta were the leading spirits in this movement. From a contemporary account:
When Dr. De la Motta took up his residence at Savannah, he found that, besides the lot given by the city to the Congregation, they had seven or eight small buildings which were rented out, which as such were but of little interest to the Israelites. Upon inquiry, the doctor ascertained from a respectable mechanic that he would build a Synagogue such as was needed, on the lot given by the city, provided a lease of the above small buildings were granted him by the Congregation free of charge for a term of eight years. The doctor thereupon convened the Congregation; a majority of the members agreed with the proposition, and the undertaking was commenced.
This building, the first synagogue to be erected in the State of Georgia, was consecrated by Dr. De la Motta on July 21, 1820. Commemorating the event is a bronze plaque embedded in the sidewalk near the site, on the northeast corner of Liberty and Whitaker streets.
It was 1853 before the congregation could afford a permanent spiritual leader. Reverend Jacob Rosenfeld served as its spiritual leader until 1862. Except for 1867-1869 when the Reverend R. D. C. Lewin served, services were again read by various members of the congregation until the arrival of Reverend A. Harris in 1873.
The Influence of Reform
The Reform movement was well under way in America by the
The Portuguese Minhag remained in use, though gradually modified, until 1895, when Mickve Israel printed its own prayer books. In 1902 the Union Prayer Book was adopted, and on January 10, 1904, membership in the Union of American Hebrew Congregations was attained and Mickve Israel’s transition to Reform Judaism was complete. The last vestige of its Spanish-Portuguese heritage is proudly maintained in the Sephardic melody “El Norah Ah Lee Lah” sung by the congregation during the closing hour of each Yom Kippur service.
The Sanctuary Today
Savannah participated in the great wave of
German-Jewish immigration that began about 1840. By 1874 it
A portion of the land that was given in perpetual trust by Mordecai Sheftall in 1773 for use as a Jewish cemetery and as a site for a synagogue had, in fact, been used as a cemetery. On December 16, 1893, the Mordecai Sheftall Trustees obtained permission from the Superior Court to sell the unused portion of the tract and to hold the proceeds of the sale for the purposes expressed in the original trust.
The present sanctuary used only the western portion of the block of land owned by the congregation; however, no provisions had been made for a religious school, meeting rooms, or the like. By the turn of the century the need for these additional facilities was keenly felt. Agreement was reached between the congregation and the Sheftall Trustees for the trustees to construct a building to be known as the Mordecai Sheftall Memorial, which was completed and dedicated in 1902. Title of the land and the complete management, supervision, and control of the new building was vested in the congregation, but title to the building itself remained, as it still does, in the hands of the trustees.
By 1954 the needs of the congregation, once again outgrew the Mordecai Sheftall Memorial. The congregation raised the necessary funds, another arrangement was entered into with the trustees, and on January 11, 1957, the new and enlarged Mordecai Sheftall Memorial was dedicated.
In commerce, law, medicine, the military, government, politics, and culture the Jews of Savannah have enriched their community and their nation. Some descendants of Mickve Israel’s colonial settlers include Mordecai Manuel Noah, sheriff of New York, founder of the Tammany hall political machine and early Zionist (in 1825 he sought to establish a Jewish homeland called “Ararat” at Grand Island on the Niagara River) and Commodore Uriah Phillips Levy, who rescued Monticello (President Thomas Jefferson’s home) from destruction and was responsible for the abolition of flogging in the U. S. Navy.
While Dr. Samuel Nunes Ribiero, who specialized in infectious diseases, was considered Georgia’s first hero in 1733 (he is credited with ending an epidemic that threatened the young colony), it was his descendant Raphael Moses, who planted peach orchards and developed the technology for shipping fruit to far-off markets and may be the father of the peach industry in the “peach state.”
Today in Mickve Israel’s Archival Museum ten presidential letters are on display, including the Washington letter, and others from Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, as well as the more recent ones from George Bush and Bill Clinton.
Grateful to its founders for having built it well, the officers and members of Congregation Mickve Israel look back upon its rich heritage with pride tempered with humility, asking only that they be permitted to continue to serve equally well “One God and One Humanity.”
Authors B. H. Levy Rabbi Arnold Mark Belzer
Editor Jane Abeshouse Feiler
Publishers Authur B. Levy Memorial Fund and Friends of Mickve Israel 1994
The crest for Congregation Mickve Israel was designed by Jane Abeshouse Feiler in 1983 for the cover of the book Third to None: The Saga of Savannah Jewry, 1733-1983 by Rabbi Saul Jacob Rubin.
In 1991 the crest was adapted by the Board of Adjunta as the official crest of the congregation.
Crown* - Represents the “Crown of Torah,” meaning the Torah is the crown of Jewish learning.
Two Lions* - Represent the two lions of Judah.
Two Columns* - Represent the columns of the First Temple of Solomon.
Forty-Two Sunrays - Represent the forty-two original Jewish settlers who came to Savannah in July 1733 and founded Congregation Mickve Israel.
Water Waves - Represent the ocean across which the Jews sailed on the ship William and Sarah from England to America
Torah - Represents the original Sefer Torah, which is one of the few religious objects the first settlers brought with them to this new land and which is proudly displayed in the congregation’s archives.
Flame - Represents three ideas: 1. the Ner Tamid, the eternal light, one of three universal symbols found in all synagogues 2. the light of the Torah, which is “as a light unto us,” and 3. the hope of freedom in the new world for the Jews fleeing the terrors of the Spanish Inquisition.
Hebrew Letters - Represent the original name of Congregation Mickve Israel, which stood for Kahal Kadosh Mickva Israel, the Holy Congregation, the Hope of Israel.
1733 - Represents the founding year of the congregation.
* These are ancient symbols that recur frequently throughout the history of Jewish art.
The rabbis of Mickve Israel (formerly known as K.K. Mickva Israel) |
